Biometric recognition using microwave reflection spectroscopy

Biometric recognition systems exploit individuals’ physical or behavioral characteristics to automatically discriminate between legitimate users and impostors, thus allowing to implement secure access control mechanisms for either physical locations or logical services. In this contribution, we investigate the feasibility of recognizing a subject through the analysis of the electromagnetic response obtained when a specific part of the body interacts with the electromagnetic field radiated by a microwave antenna. In detail, measurements of the reflection coefficient resulting when different subjects place their hands upon the radiating aperture of the antenna are taken and used to extract discriminative features characterizing the involved users. To evaluate whether the considered recognition modality could be exploited in realworld applications, multiple recordings are taken from each of the considered subjects in distinct days and employed in the performed experimental tests to estimate the achievable recognition performance. The obtained results show that the proposed paradigm can be effectively employed to implement a stand-alone system performing biometric recognition, or exploited to design multi-biometric frameworks when used together with other well-established recognition modalities, such as those based on palm prints or palm veins.